CCAS and cinema: 32 years of happy links
While the 2025 edition of the Visions Social Festival which it organizes in parallel with the Cannes Festival is in full swing, focusing on the other multiple actions of the CCAS, social activities of energy in the seventh art
It is a meeting point which, over time, has become essential, every month of May in Cannes. A festival in the festival: social visions, created in 2001. But what is less known is that social visions is only one of the multiple actions of the CCAS (the Caisse de Activities Sociales of the Electric and Gazers Staff) which has organized it and has been revealed for more than 30 years a faithful and major support of the seventh art and those who do it. “” This cultural approach has always existed at the CCAS and this in multiple artistic fields », Explains Eddy Combret, a member of the CCUS Culture Commission, which has been part of the social visions steering committee for years. “” A desire to create a relationship between works and individuals, with all that it generates as a personal transformation and modification of the gaze on others … By our different actions, we wish to facilitate access to aesthetics Different, to sensitivities capable of offering tools to understand the world, to better cultivate the desire to transform it around the values that have always permeated solidarity, social justice, peace. A DNA that stems from what the CCAS is, an organization from the world of work (managed by a pluralist collective of representatives of elected energy employees) who intends to work on the emancipation of employees and their families.
And this noble ambition is deployed on several grounds to accompany long and short films, French and international, fictions and documentaries, which have in common this desire to question things both from the point of view of the story they tell and of aesthetics. An approach that does not obey any specifications but pursues a constitutive commitment to its history. “” The first union organization was created on the meeting of professions federations: employees who had organized themselves to defend their working conditions and the labor grants where, during the industrial revolution, while not everyone ate their hunger, workers had the conviction that a cultural policy had to be developed. By libraries, by living shows, by philosophy or politics education lessons. The CCAS is therefore placed basically in its steps, including and especially in these declining budget times that hit the world of culture. “” This question of the need for culture is a right and remains essential. And even if it was not our primary goal, we are proud today to support a whole section of industry »»
This support therefore takes several forms over the life of works. First via writing aids, as Stéphane Brizé, Aïssa Maïga or Laurent Bécue-Renard, for his documentary could have benefited from it for his documentary Of men and warwhich had then been selected in special sessions at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. But also by aid for a multitude of festivals across France: Cannes and all its sections of course but also first plans in Angers, Cinemed in Montpellier, the international meetings of the medium -length of Brive, Cinélatino in Toulouse, Le Fema de la Rochelle… “ We rely on the lifts of our territorial entities to identify the demonstrations that could be accompanied. Then, the CCAS Culture Commission decides whether or not to support action or events. The idea is to associate cultural democratization and cultural democracy. To give tools to work on emancipation and ensure the emancipation of others. And permanently associate employees and their families with the construction of this cultural policy ». A logic from which aid to distribution follows from which several films have benefited, notably before the generalization of digital projections, as Will there be snow at Christmas? by Sandrine Veysset or My life in pink by Alain Berliner. Hence the fact that the CCAS was also initiated by the Ticket Art and Essay and that it continues each year to create new events such as this jury which, at the Venice Mostra 2025, will bring together French and Italian adolescents, children of the employees of the electric and gas industries on both sides of the Alps. But the CCAS also knew how to take the digital turn. “” We did not want to concentrate our action on the mere cinema alone and neglect this channel for the dissemination of works which allows us to be present alongside employees and their families throughout the year. 2000 Works are available in VOD with an editorialization policy to support them and even free access to certain awards by beneficiaries in film festivals.
The word festival obviously refers us to social visions which opened its doors on May 17. “” Its origin dates back to the 90s, fruit at the bottom of the long history between unionism and Cannes. Because the CGT was deeply involved to defend the idea of creating a festival in response to the appropriation by the fascists of the Venice Mostra. And it still has two seats on the board of directors of Cannes. Then everything accelerated in the 2000s when the CCAS bought the Château de la Napoule to make it the setting of social visions. “” There has been a progressive evolution and rise. Because the Cannes Film Festival is not only luxury or bling bling. It takes time to explain that it is a place that through cinematographic looks allows us to question ourselves about the state of the world, a place that gives views of filmmakers who live in countries where making a film is courage and feat. And it also seems essential to us that the world of work is present in places like Cannes to express our way of seeing things. Today, we program 50 films per edition ”. This year, it will be through them a question of environment, the world of work, the place of women, but also of conflicts that are currently gnawing the world, especially in Israel and Palestine. Hadman Ballal, the Oscar-winning director of No Other Landwill be present for example to accompany his film.
After, among others, Agnès Varda Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Corinne Masiero or Aïssa Maïga, it is the talented Erige Sehiri who was chosen as godmother of this 2025 edition while her second feature film fiction, Promised the skyhas just opened the a certain look section ” We have always been careful to welcome young filmmakers. And it turns out that we had the chance to project his first long, Under the fig trees, As part of our partnerships with the different sections of the festival and that we loved it, as did its documentary The way normaldevoted to rail workers in Tunisia. The CCAS will also take advantage of this 2025 edition to say loud and clear its fears about the budget cuts that threaten or have already struck the cultural sector across the countries. “” We are in the process of formalizing the expression but we hear loud and clear that we need more than ever a various and powerful artistic and cultural sector. And that what is happening today puts a danger. Including in terms of popular education, an enrichment of looks at the state of the world. “And this fight is anything but cinema!
